File:Viola d'amore (AM 1998.60.9.1-3).jpg

English: Viola d'amore, with case and bow, scroll carved in the shape of Moorish female head. Fourteen pegs in place, smaller pegs near head, increasing in size, each peg has white circular knob on its end. Dark wood fingerboard seven playing strings, seven sympathetic (resonating) strings which run through the bridge and under the finger board into separate pegs in the peg box , flaming sword sound holes 1 viola d’amore maker unknown, European, 19th century maple, spruce, mahogany, fruitwood, ebony, bone, gut, length of back 415 mm 1998.60.9.1 Castle 12 viola d’amore bow Arnold Dolmetsch workshop, Haslemere, Surrey, England, circa 1935 - 40 pernambuco, ebony, maple, bone, overall length 713 mm, weight 51.4g 1998.60.9.2 Castle 12 Ronald Castle wrote ‘(this viola d’amore is) perhaps my favourite of the bowed instruments in our collection’. The viola d’amore (a viol with seven fingered strings) is distinguished by a second set of sympathetic strings that pass untouched beneath the fingerboard and vibrate sympathetically when the instrument is played. This instrument was once owned and played by Arnold Dolmetsch, and the Dolmetsch-made out-curved bow was ordered along with the instrument.